Butter

[Muslima4life]

As salam alaikum.

Butter is made from milk, cream or both and it is known and used worldwide. There are various standards worldwide. In USA, butter must contains at least 80% milk fat by weight, in Australia it has 16% maximum water limit and in Belgium it has to have a minimum of 82% milk fat by weight.

Butter is made differently in different parts of the world. In India and Pakistan, the home made better is called Mukhan and it is a cultured butter. It is made from milk by fermenting milk over night to Dahi and then Dahi is churned to make butter or Mukhan. In Europe butter is made from ripened cream or adding lactic acid cultured directly to butter during churning process and it is called cultured butter. Sweet Cream butter and cultured cream butter are manufactured in USA and Canada.
In Europe, lactic acid cultures with flavor producing bacteria are added to cream in ripened cream butter. The starter culture bacteria are Streptococcus lactis, S. cremoris, S. diacetilactis and Leuconostoc. In ripening of the cream for butter, lactose and citric acid are attacked separately to give lactic acid and flavoring compounds such as diacetyl, propionic and acetic acid. The Cultured cream butter is produced by adding 1 to 3% by weight lactic acid cultured bacteria to butter directly during churning.

The Halal status of butter in Europe depends upon the source of starter cultures. It should be from milk source not from meat. The second important thing for the Halal status is the constituents of the media used to grow both starter mother cultures and starter bulk culture for production. If the media is made of only milk or Halal ingredients and no animal derived ingredients are added then the media will be Halal. It should be under Halal certification. Same Halal requirements for butter will be applied to other parts of world where cultured cream is used to make butter.

In USA and Canada, it is different from other parts of the world. The criteria for domestic butter manufacturer are to supply butter for retail supermarkets and for food manufacturer who use butter as an ingredient in their processed food products. In USA, butter is graded by USDA using several characters of butter such as color and flavor to give AA or A grade.
Majority of retail butter is sweet cream butter and it is available under brands such as Land O Lakes, Tillamoak, Challenge, Danish Creamery, Crystal Farm, Organic valley, Borden, Cabot, Breakstone, and Kellers (salted butter from these brands are Halal), several supermarket brands. Cultured butter is a rich butter made from cultured cream and it is being produced in USA and available in some regions of the USA.
A European Danish cultured butter is marketed in USA under the brand name of Lura Pak by Arla Foods of Denmark. It contains cream, culture and salt. But it is not Halal because lack of certification. Muslim consumers has to know the source of cultures and make up of the growth media.
The most important quality of butter is its flavor, and it is derived from milk constituents, the products of bacterial growth, and added flavor concentrate such as starter distillates. The starter distillate is mentioned as natural flavoring under ingredients statement. Three types of sweet cream butter is available for table purpose in supermarkets and they are salted butter, unsalted butter and whipped butter. Air is used to whip the butter to make fluffy and light butter.
The salted sweet cream butter is made from cream and salt (1.6 to 1.8%). Cream is separated in centrifugal separators from milk and then it is pasteurized. Cream is then churned in metal churns until fat globules coalesce into butter granules. Salt is added at this time to butter granules and it is churned until the fat of the cream solidifies.
Unsalted butter is made with cream and starter distillate and ingredients of the unsalted butter is cream and natural flavoring.
Starter distillate is made from fermentation of skim milk or non fat dry milk by several bacteria.

Starter distillate is considered as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) by FDA and regulated under code of food regulation title 21 part 184.1848. According to FDA, starter distillate or butter starter distillate is a steam distillate of the culture of any or all of the following species of bacteria grown on a medium consisting of skim milk usually fortified with 0.1% citric acid: Streptococcus lactis, S. cremoris, and S. lactis subsp. diacetylactis, Leuconostoc citrovorum, and L. dextranicum. The ingredient contains more than 98% water, and reminder is a mixture of organic flavor compounds. Besides diacetyl, starter distillate contains minor amounts of acetaldehyde, ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, acetone, ethyl alcohol, 2-butanone, acetic acid and acetoin.
According to a starter distillate manufacturer in USA, there is no alcohol present in their starter distillate but they do not have scientific proof such as Gas Chromatography to justify their claim, although their products are Halal and Kosher certified. The Halal certification organization should run GC before certifying the starter distillate because some bacteria mentioned in FDA statement produce acids only and some acid and alcohol such as in the case of Kefir. It is also depend upon which bacteria are used to manufacturer starter distillate. It is possible that they might use those bacteria which do not produce alcohol during fermentation. Some may argue that amount of alcohol present is very small but we have to bring this knowledge to Muslim consumers and they will decide whether to consume the unsalted butter or not in USA and Canada. Our recommendation is to do thorough investigation with the manufacturer asking scientific evidence in regard with absence of alcohol. If there is no alcohol present in starter distillate or natural flavoring then they consume the unsalted butter if it is under certification.

Unsalted butter is used in many processed food products but this butter contains 100% cream. It does not make sense to use unsalted butter with natural flavoring because it will not provide butter flavor in the processed foods where other ingredients are used, so they have to add natural butter flavor to provide flavor in the finished product. Unsalted butter is sold in 50 pounds block and majority of it comes from New Zealand, Europe and South American countries because domestic butter is expensive. Both domestic and foreign unsalted butter is made of 100% cream. Unsalted butter with no flavoring in butter is used in butter croissants but the manufacturer has to add natural butter flavor to provide the butter flavor in croissant. Baking companies usually do not use salted butter because salt in the butter imparts toughness to the gluten structure of the baked products.

Our recommendation is to buy only salted butter from supermarkets because it is always made with cream and salt and no flavoring is added to it. It is Halal even without any certification and Muslim consumers do not have to be worry about presence of alcohol in salted butter.

Muslim Consumer Group

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